The Positive Aspects of Religion and Education

Although there are numerous religions that can be found throughout the world, most, if not all share a common theme or aspect which is charity, or treating others the way you wish to be treated. There is this almost unanimous agreement that treating others fairly and with respect is how you live a positive life, or make it to heaven, paradise, or whatever your particular religion calls the afterlife. This concept can be used to improve education greatly. In many middle schools and high schools, community service is part of the requirement to graduate. For some, it may be exactly that, just a requirement, but I am sure that there are a great number of students who enjoy it, and actually gained something positive and fulfilling from that experience. I know for myself personally, while it started out as a tedious requirement, I ended up learning a lot about myself and now when I get the chance, I like to do volunteer work on my own free will, I like to help others and feel as if I am making a contribution, and hopefully these experiences are helping to mold me into a better person. If there was a way to make charity work or community service part of the school curriculum instead of just something that needs to be done to graduate, I think it would really help better the students and make them want to make a change in their communities and other people's lives. There definitely is no negative outcome from helping others.

This a link to a study done on how community service helps benefits students.
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.black/benefits_of_participation_in_service

WHAT DOES FAMILY REALLY MEAN?

I'm sure for a lot of people, a "traditional" family is the mom, dad, 2.5 kids, and the dog. However, times have changed and for a lot of people that is not even close to what their family resembles. For me personally, I like to thing that I have a few different families. For the first half of my life, my grandparents raised me along with two of my cousins, and than I lived with my mother who was a single parent. They, to me are my biological family. Then I have my god-family who couldn't be any closer to me if we were blood related. There is a bond and closeness between my biological and god-family because we've lived together, grew up together, and share similar values. I no longer consider myself Catholic or Christian, but my family is, and when I was younger I think their faith is what helped keep us together through difficult times. Not only that, I have a group of friends that I went to school with and we've all known each other for over ten years. We still talk daily, hang out during the weekends, help each other out financially and emotionally and I consider us to be a "family" as well. I don't think there is one single definition of what a family is, it's different for each person. I think that if there is a bond, if you love and respect one another, that is a family in itself.

This is a link to what certain people's definitions of what a family is:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/health/work-life-balance/HTH_WLB/721264-41435431

I agree that a family can have an impact on the greater society, be it negative and/or positive. A family, no matter who it is comprised off is where most if not all people learn right from wrong, how to interact with others, morals, and religious beliefs, etc. Than they take that out into the world and act according to what they've grown up learning and believing. If you are from a family that stresses giving back to the community and they have taught you to be a good person, than that's how you'll live your life out in the world. And if you're from a family where you were surrounded by violence, didn't stress education or good morals that is also how you will behave in public. In order for there to be a positive impact within the global community, families need to make sure they are raising respectful, law abiding, open minded individuals who can contribute to society instead of being deviants that take from it.

Social Experiment

For this assignment I chose to target one of my aunt's. No particular reason, but she just happened to be visiting for the weekend and I didn't want to try this type of thing at work. I like to listen to a variety of music, and my family likes to joke around that I listen to a lot of "white" music i.e. emo, some country, and techno. I like what I like though. My mom is used to me blasting this type of music through out the house so she didn't say anything, but this was probably the first time my aunt had heard it. I happened to be listening to Daft Punk which is a French, techno group, and my aunt commented that I was "weird" for listening to this and what the hell were they even talking about? I knew she was just kidding, but I told her "this music is for the young folk, you're too old to get it." I laughed when I said it, and of course afterwards I explained the assignment, but the look on her face was funny and shocking all at the same time. It was a mixture of confusion and having the sudden urge to run to a mirror and check for herself if this was the case. Now, I do have to mention that my aunt is far from old, at least in my opinion. I believe she's in her late forties, and she's a vegetarian and exercises regularly, so she looks great for her age. I still almost expected this type of reaction from my aunt though. I know as her 50th birthday looms closer she has become a little more sensitive about her age and looks. I think her response is typical of many middle-aged people, especially women. There seems to be some sort of misconception that growing older automatically equals unattractive or some other sort of negative connotation. Getting old doesn't necessarily mean wrinkly skin, liver spots, and a hearing aid. But in society, especially if you look at mass media that's always the stereotype that's portrayed. Luckily, my aunt was understanding after I explained the assignment, and of course I reassured her that she is not old and looked great no matter what. No harm, no foul :)

Racial Discrimination

I don't know if it's because I may be naive or just completely unaware of my surroundings at times, but up until recently, perhaps one or two years ago I didn't think that I had ever been a victim of racial discrimination. I come from a bi-racial family, grew up in the suburbs of Montgomery County, Maryland and went to Catholic and private schools up until high school. Throughout my entire life I had been exposed to different cultures and races, and even until this day many of my close friends come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds than me. Whenever I was treated unfairly, I choose to believe it was just because that particular person was a jerk, and would have treated a Caucasian the exact same way. That changed a couple of years ago when my daughter was born. My daughter is also of mixed race, and to me she just looks like a little brown baby, I cant pinpoint any one race that I see in her, but apparently other people view her in a different light. There have been several different incidents where me and my daughter have been out in public, sometimes with her father, and we have gotten such outright, dirty looks, it  makes me want to tear up at the fact that there are people out there who will treat my daughter unfairly just because they are assuming what race she is.
One particular incident was extremely disturbing. I had my daughter with me at Wheaton Mall, which is in a predominately Latino neighborhood. An African American couple walked by us, looked at me and my child,  and the man said out loud, "God, these people are just taking over, and they always have so many damn kids." I'm assuming by "these people" he suspected us to be Latino, and for whatever reason I had to let him know I did not appreciate his comment. I'd like to think that I am pretty reserved, but something struck a nerve and I proceeded to yell and cursed at him and his wife for a good ten minutes, letting them know how ignorant I felt they were, along with a few other choice words. Its hard for me to believe that in 2011 there are so many ignorant and racist people. Screaming and yelling may not have been the best way to go about it, and if I could go back, I probably would have told that couple in a more polite way to die slow, and stop worrying about what me and "these people" are doing. Even than, I feel like there is little that can be done to change a person's biased or prejudice views. Hate is learned, and by the time these people are adults, there ignorant views are so embedded in their brains, any other opinion is probably foreign to them. However I plan on continuing to live my life as I see fit, and ignore these uneducated, racist people, and teach my daughter to do the same.